Please don't eat the hell flowers

Hell flower

I left the house early this morning, looking for a flower. I thought the nearest likely place would be the grassy park behind Meiji Jingu, so I grabbed a cup of coffee and walked, happily shabby, against the tide of pressed and polished commuters. I read about the "flower of the dead" on my Twitter friend Uchijin's site yesterday. I've never noticed these bright red flowers before. I hadn't realized there was any flower that signaled the end of summer. Like the yin to the sakura's yang. Or vice versa? I can never keep them straight.
Anyway, I was enjoying the park and the half dozen people dotting it: one guy on the grass reading a newspaper, a woman doing NHK-approved morning stretches under a tree, an angry-looking old lady hobbling fast with a cane, and someone wearing head-to-toe denim fast asleep on a small tarp. I'd forgotten what I was there for when a spray of red under a tree caught my eye. That was it! I felt like I'd conjured the plant. I hadn't really expected to find one. Up close, it was beautiful and covered with black ants.
Do check out Adrian's post and the ones linked within it for lore on this flower and some incredible pro photos.

Child's play in Ishinomaki

The bus was crowded before anyone got on.

A bunch of us piled into a small rainbow-painted bus in a Tokyo suburb in the middle of the night. I was joining a group of parents from Abiko on their third relief run up to Ishinomaki City on the tsunami-scrubbed coast of Miyagi prefecture. The first two trips, they'd taken up truckloads of the necessities people were doing without as they lived in shelters or crowded into upper stories of half-gutted houses. This time, they were taking a children's fair. A midnight caravan to set up a one-day festival? There's something a little bit Something Wicked This Way Comes about it, except that the kids were already in a nightmarish situation and we were going just to bring a little cheer. The rented bus was crammed from the storage space underneath to the ceiling with donated snacks, games, toys, dolls, bicycles, generators, balloons, bingo cards, two sturdy trampolines, a cotton candy machine, and gear and ingredients to make 60 jars of homemade ice cream.

Fifteen of us wedged ourselves into the spaces that were left and drove from midnight til about 7:30 in the morning, stopping frequently. (Some strange goings on at the rest stops, but that's for another post.) As we drove through central Ishinomaki, organizer Yoshie said it was unbelievable how much better it was. At first, it looked like Main Street in any pre-dawn small city in Japan, with awnings running over the sidewalks on both sides of the street and neat shutters pulled down over each shop. A few places were boarded up like they were awaiting a hurricane. But then, some looked like they'd been kicked apart in a rage from the inside.

We set up in a grassy park near a temple at the top of a high, steep hill overlooking the water. The high ground saved a lot of lives during the tsunami. We had to carry all the boxes and bundles about 200 meters from the parking lot to the field. Happily, Jamie, Manish and a few other local volunteers from It's Not Just Mud met us at the site in the morning with hot coffee and plenty of enthusiasm.

We had a low table in the shade for kids to make name cards and a spot under a trellis where one crafty mother led the kids in making little animals and charms out of branches and pine cones. Some local volunteers made giant soap bubbles using bamboo sticks and string. The first kids to arrive batted around an oversized badminton set, and then ran around swatting volunteers with the rackets while we were setting up. The hardest part was setting up the steel-pipe trampolines donated by a school in Ireland via a Quakebook contributor. (Actually, taking them apart was even harder, as one little girl started crying and yelling at us to stop, clinging to the one she was on while we pried, pulled and kicked apart the other.) One of the most popular activities on a hot day was making icecream. An ingenious combination of two-liter bottles, ice, salt, jam jars and fifteen minutes of shaking -- plus a little cream, vanilla and sugar -- yielded a solidly frozen treat that one of the test-tasters said "tastes like the expensive icecream."

Icecream making was a big winner

Throughout the day, more than 200 people came through. Most of the kids seemed like they were about seven or younger. We hadn't known what to expect - fliers had been put up in elementary schools and public places where kids might be in Ishinomaki, but we had no idea how many or what age kids would come. At the end, when kids were lining up to get the overstuffed goodie bags that corresponded to the numbers they'd found in a balloon scavenger hunt, we were pleased to see that the rations fit the numbers quite well.

Yoshie said that while most people she talked to during the weeks of preparation loved the idea and many people pitched in with all kinds of help and donations, some told her it was a bad project, because the children don't need games, they need x. Or because you shouldn't help like that, you should help like y. Their ideas about what the children needed were simply their ideas; they weren't privy to any better information than anyone else. This is a painful thing that happens around volunteering or donating. Did you do enough? Did you do the right thing? The fact is, you can never do enough and there isn't one right thing. So if you have something you can do that will make some kids smile for a few hours, why wouldn't you do it? Back in Tokyo 24 hours after we left, we were all glad we did.
Yoshie put up a Freetohoku blog post in English and Japanese with lots of great pictures and details, including the off-hand comment that broke our hearts.
The photographer who went along with us posted some great photos from the day here.

Funny weather icons don't lie

The typhoon went right over Tokyo yesterday evening, right at rush hour. Many companies sent people home at three pm or so. From what I hear, trains were crowded then, but running normally. People who waited until the usual time to leave had a lot of trouble. Trains stopped, traffic was blocked by downed trees, and train and bus stations were packed solid. Because it was the middle of a typhoon. Why didn't companies let (or better, make) people leave earlier? The storm track was pretty clear early in the day. There was heavy flooding elsewhere, but Tokyo was, again, mostly okay.
The good thing about the storm is that it was moving fast, so the rain had stopped where we are by 7 pm or so, and the worst of the wind seemed to have died down within an hour after that. The group to suffer the greatest number of casualties was, as predicted by the morning news, umbrellas.
例のマークシティ下の傘の山 on Twitpic

Typhoon Roke: A hard rain

Japan is battening down the hatches (does Japan have hatches?) for Typhoon Number 15, or Roke. Look at this thing. Amateur linguists, please note that Roke does not mean "15." I don't know what it means or why there's a name and a number. Presumably these things are knowable, but you're not gonna find 'em out hanging out around here. Instead, I have amusing icons and some free association for you. First, the most sadly apt weather icon since the angry sun. If it's that windy, probably best to leave the umbrella at home and go with a raincoat. Or leave yourself at home and don't go out at all.

Second, they're trying to evacuate over a million people from the Nagoya area. Rivers are rising and streets were already flooding all over this morning before the storm had fully hit. Tokyo will get rain and wind, and there will surely be train and traffic trouble. We're not expecting severe flooding, though, I don't think. (We're up on a hill anyway. So if it gets bad, come over.)

The free association part: Almost exactly six years ago, I was flying into Houston to wait for Hurricane Rita as the city was evacuating some three million people - still the largest evacuation in US history. The storm was heading for the Gulf Coast just three weeks after Katrina, so the Tokyo Shinbun sent my boss and me there to see how badly it would go the second time around. There were only a few people on the plane. On the ground, fewer people were taking chances with being left behind post-Katrina, and the view from the sky of cars packing one side of the highway as far as we could see was incredible. Our hotel was attached to the shut-down airport. A few dozen airport employee families were sheltering for the night around the baggage carousels. I talked to some of them and then spent the evening wandering around, riding the little Disney train alone through the empty terminals. I'm not sure why I was able to do that, now that I think about it.
Rita didn't do much damage in Houston, so we drove east until we found flooding. Here's a set of photos from that night and the drive the next day. Some of the captions aren't bad.

Disappointingness in a bottle

Everyone's been making fun of this new tea called Pungency, for obvious reasons - it's a terrible name for a drink. It has bad connotations, and it isn't a normal part of speech for a brand name. But I have to admit, I was hoping it was right on. Bottled 'royal milk tea' is always too sweet and mild. In the last few years, there have been drinks that claimed to be stronger - double tea leaves, espresso brewed - but it all tastes mostly like milk and sugar. They were all missing a certain... pungency.
Alas, this tastes the same as always. No bracing bitterness to balance the sugar. They should have called it Regularness. Or Normalcy. Maybe next year's attempt will be called Same-as-before-ish.
Also, "pungency" is not a well known English word around here. The entire Pungency ad campaign revolves around answering what the word means. Is that really where you want to start?

Earth Celebration on the internet!

It's not the same as being there, but world-famous taiko group Kodo put HD video of last weekend's Earth Celebration concerts online. It's streaming on-demand for free, but only until August 31. Check it out while you can! They really are incredible. Watch here on Ustream.
Being there was great. It was another world from Tokyo. The fauna was  prehistoric - I found a six-inch long poisonous centipede. In the bath. A moth that looked like a fat bird. A lizard that was fat and shiny. The coast was jagged and the greenery jungle lush.
There was plenty of great food, like Brazilian pastels, Italian sausage, and Turkish kebabs. A lovely coffee roaster guy was grinding his beans to order and brewing individual cups of coffee that were worth waiting 20 minutes in line for.
The social media coverage thing went pretty well. Turns out that people who come out to camp and chill out on the beach with an acoustic guitar aren't necessarily  into tweeting every second of their day. Weird, right? But there were people watching our reports from Hong Kong, England and the US.
As much as I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, I didn't fall under the spell of the festival like all of my friends who get that faraway look in their eyes when they talk about EC. I think that level of intoxication probably demands late-night beach parties, intense and doomed three-day love affairs and, well, intoxication. As staff, we stayed in a beautiful tatami-matted building that was near all the action - it had a kitchen, nearby onsen and kept us snug despite the rain, but there were no bonfires or parties. 
My phone shut down on the last day. Kaput. I lost all the photos I had taken that I hadn't posted online. Luckily, Jim brought his camera along and got some nice shots.

Earth Celebration on Sado Island!

Taking the midnight bus tonight to an island all the way on the other side of Japan. We've been hearing about how amazing Earth Celebration on Sado Island is since we got here, and now we're finally going to check it out. And taking you along! This is a music festival that's always welcomed the world by hosting international guests and acts - this year the festival is reaching out, too, via streaming video and social media stuff. The festival has Twitter, Facebook and -- if it goes as I hope -- Storify pages. It would be so great if you would follow, like and check out those pages for the next four days. You might say there's a little bit of Japandra in all of them. If I can get my phone battery to last for more than an hour at a stretch...

So, please! Get a little taste of all the music, dancing, art and good good vibes. Maybe if we all celebrate the Earth real nice, she'll go easy on us for a while.
Follow Sado_EC on Twitter
Like Earth Celebration on Facebook
Share the link for Storify.

And please check out the streaming video on Ustream. We'll announce on Twitter when video is going up.

Palace of Fine Arts

This Palace of Fine Arts is beautiful and makes no sense as an outdoor structure. It's not much of a garden, it has no facilities and isn't really big enough for a city-scale public event. So what is it? Turns out it had a fascinating role in revitalizing San Francisco and the surrounding area after the devastating 1906 earthquake. The building that's there now is just a small, fully reconstructed part of the sprawling 1915 Panama-Pacific Expo.
It also had a role in The Rock, and I looked everywhere but did not see Sean Connery.

Give me back my finger

Speaking of posting old stuff... this has been sitting for a year. A year since we sat at a restaurant that no longer exists with friends who are no longer in Tokyo.
Talking about a guy who no longer has a pinkie.
Our friends Alex and Alwyn had wandered into the festivities at Yasukuni Shrine right on August 15 -- a big rallying day for nationalists. Going to see the right wing protests there had become sort of a tradition for the two of them, ever since they had ended up there during their first week in Japan five years earlier. This time, as they were getting ready to move out of the country, they found the ultimate souvenir on the ground behind the crowd of young and old in WWII costumes: a prosthetic pinkie with dirty gauze still stuffed inside. We all handed the finger around the dinner table with equal revulsion and merriment. Yes, that is terrible on many levels.
I miss them.

The blogging equivalent of jetlag

Well. We've been back from vacation for almost two weeks now. There are still pictures and little non-stories from the trip I'd like to post. (There's still stuff from Turkey from a year ago I'd like to post, but that's another story.) Meantime, there's life going on here. (Nothing too exciting, just, you know, life.) But I feel like going back and forth with stuff from Japan and the trip is like flying too often across time zones. Like when you wake up trying to figure out why all your furniture is in the wrong place. What's that behemoth Korean taco truck doing in Tokyo? What's that Japanese pop group doing at a train station in Seattle? They're wearing sweaters, they're complaining about the muggy heat, she's eating an icecream sandwich bigger than her head and yet sorting trash into burnable and non. And why are there suddenly tall buildings outside? I secretly look forward to that moment of utter confusion between sleeping and waking when I open my eyes in a strange place at an off hour. If you kind of like that too, stick around.